on relocalizing food production or further “globalization” of
production?

more superhighways or better trains and transit?

more coal, oil and nuclear, or more renewable energy systems?

for global permaculture solutions or global war to fight over the last oil reserves?

The environmental and
peace movements are needed to help develop peaceful, permaculture responses
to "Peak Everything" -- the biggest problem ever faced by humanity. It takes oil to build renewable energy equipment, and nearly everyone (living above the level of subsistence agriculture) eats food that is grown and distributed
with fossil fuels.

The global crises of the end of cheap oil and the start of climate change require global levels of solutions (relocalize everywhere). We are not merely at peak oil, we are at peak technology, peak money, peak communication. Real solutions would require us to redirect the energy, talents, resources, etc. of global capitalism, the military industrial complex, universities, media and other pillars of our society.

We have enough resources and talent to shift civilization to create a peaceful world that might be able to gracefully cope with the end of concentrated fossil fuels, or to create a global police state to control populations as the resources decline. We don't have the ability to have a peaceful world while embarking on a World War over the last of the fossil fuels that power civilization.

Understanding why civilization did not respond to the warnings of resource depletion decades ago is needed if a shift toward sanity is still possible at this late date. This is a simple question that has a complicated answer - since these decisions were not made democratically. Addressing Peak and Climate would require world peace instead of Peak Oil Wars.

We are not "addicted" to oil -- the modern world is completely dependent upon fossil fuels for industrial agriculture systems, transportation networks, and the growth based monetary system. Addictions are things you can give up -- but oil runs our civilization.

Converting the remaining resources to peaceful, permaculture uses would require
removing the pretext for the "war that
will not end in our lifetime" (as Cheney called it). Every war has a pretext to whip up public fear and anger,
since few people support wars otherwise. Very few US citizens would have
supported the war on Iraq if Bush had admitted the real reason: to control the planet's
remaining oil supplies as we approach Peak Oil.

This peaceful conversion, in turn, requires discrediting the official
claim that 9/11 was a surprise attack. Some claims of complicity are not correct, but there is a wealth of evidence proven beyond reasonable doubt, sourced to the mass media and official
testimony, that fits a complicity paradigm much better than an “incompetence”
paradigm. The attacks were deliberately allowed to happen ("shock and awe") to justify war abroad and "homeland security" domestically.

"For the next half-century there will be just enough energy resources left to enable either a horrific and futile contest for the remaining spoils, or a heroic cooperative effort toward radical conservation and transition to a post-fossil-fuel energy regime.
"The next century will see the end of global geopolitics, one way or another. If our descendants are fortunate, the ultimate outcome will be a world of modest, bioregionally organized communities living on received solar energy."
-- Richard Heinberg, The US and Eurasia: End Game for the Industrial Era? www.museletter.com/archive/132.html

Another Fake Election

The 2008 "election" was a choice between the Rockefeller Republicans and the neo-cons, between the Council on Foreign Relations (Obama / Biden) and the American Enterprise Institute (McCain), between the old guard of foreign policy and the crazies. We need better choices than that if we are going to be able to use some of the rest of the oil for relocalization, renewable energy and "power down" strategies to mitigate the end of the age of oil. Unfortunately, we got the choice of "smarter empire" versus "Fourth Reich," not a choice of "empire" versus "no empire." Worse, it is obvious that the "voters" do not determine the outcome -- Presidential elections are rigged in advance by elites who are divided about tactics but not about the goal of US global dominance. The role of the media in determining elections is more important than touch screen voting machines and ballot scanners.

Good Cop, Bad Cop and the Destruction of Iraq

This website has - since 2003 - had a major focus to show how oil geography in the Middle East is a primary motivator of US policies. The selection of Senator Biden to be Obama's Vice Presidential running mate confirms this understanding, as Biden's failed Presidential campaign in 2007 was primarily focused on dismembering Iraq as a supposed solution to ethnic conflict between different groups that allegedly was not fueled by the US occupation. This partition would make it much easier for the US to control the oil fields -- and a long term goal is to similarly divide Iran and Saudi Arabia, creating a new country out of eastern Saudi Arabia, southern Iraq and western Iran that would have nearly all of the oil of those three countries. If this new "Arab Shia state" were combined with US allies Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, this would give the US control over half of the world's remaining oil reserves. This is not a "failure" of US policy in Iraq, merely an extremely cynical Machiavellian strategy. However, this goal probably would require a President with a better image than George W. Bush to conclude. Bush was the Bad Cop for the Empire, Obama has the potential to be the Good Cop.

Peak Oil and
Climate Change

The most important question facing humanity is how we will use the remaining oil. We have burned about half of it, but the second half of the oil age will be much shorter - and probably much more violent as countries fight to control what is left. If we are smart, we will use the rest of the oil to make solar panels instead of battleships, and relocalize food production instead of creating more global sweatshops.

The trillion dollars spent to destroy Iraq could have financed an excellent high speed train network to connect our cities together.

In 2007, we are near or at the global Peak of oil production (extraction). Most efforts to mitigate the shortage involve technologies that worsen pollution that is destabilizing the climate. Turning mountains of coal into gasoline might ease the pressure (slightly) on oil demand for a few years, but the cost for the atmosphere could be catastrophic.

We are not "addicted" to oil -- the modern world is completely dependent upon it for our industrial agriculture systems, our transportation networks, and the global economy. Addictions are things you can give up -- but oil runs our civilization.

9/11 was allowed to happen (and given technical assistance) to trigger Peak Oil Wars. Foreknowledge is proven beyond reasonable doubt. Specific warnings (what, when, where) came from Germany, France, Israel, Egypt, Russia and other allies. Several Air Force war games on 9/11 confused the air defenses or ensured fighter planes were too far away to stop the attacks. The CIA ran a "plane into building" drill near Dulles Airport, Virginia during 9/11. FBI probes of the flight schools were obstructed by senior management.

It is likely that remote control technology was used to "hijack the hijackers" to steer Flight 77 into the nearly empty, recently reconstructed and strengthened sector of the Pentagon (instead of crowded parts).

9/11 disinformation

There are many disinformation
efforts that “muddy the waters” around 9/11 that make most Bush opponents reluctant to investigate evidence for complicity. The most important is the false claim that the Pentagon plane crash was faked -- a hoax created by Donald Rumsfeld to distract from best evidence, and discredit 9/11 skepticism inside the Beltway, both by the majority of the citizens (most voted against Bush) and the political and military elites (most were not part of the cabal that allowed and assisted 9/11).

People who promote the "no plane" nonsense get mentioned in these media outlets, those who point out that claim is a hoax and stress the suppressed warnings, wargames and other best evidence are ignored. It is a form of psychological warfare to discredit those raising serious questions by associating them with nonsense.

The best analyses of Peak Oil and of global warming each conclude that the problem would have to be addressed a decade or two before it manifests at full strength - yet both problems are here, now. Perhaps the truth is that the shadow government (corporations and the military industrial complex) did not want to deal with these problems because the solutions are inherently decentralized and would require relaxation of centralized power control systems. Since we missed the opportunity to solve these issues as gently as possible, governments are instituting a global surveillance police state to suppress dissent as the oil that runs the show becomes more scarce and expensive, and climate change reduces available food and water supplies.

Dick Cheney called the “War on Terror” a war that will not end in our lifetimes because it will take decades to use up the oil in the Middle East. The neo-conservatives call this conflict World War IV -- in their view, World War III was the Cold War from 1945 to 2001.

The June 2006 issue of “Armed Forces Journal” published a map by Ralph Peters, a pro-war neo-conservative strategist that showed a redrawing of the borders of many Middle Eastern countries, especially Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Most of the region’s oil would be in the “Arab Shia State” -- since the oil is largely concentrated along the Persian Gulf and the Iraq-Iran border. The Sunni part of Iraq, most of Saudi Arabia and most of Iran (which is not Arab) would be left without much oil -- which is why Team Bush is exacerbating ethnic and religious tensions throughout the region.

The poor countries
will bear most of the burden [of high oil prices]. But the United
States will be in serious difficulties. There is, I fear, a strong
danger of some ill-considered military intervention to try to secure
oil.
-- Colin Campbell, petrogeologist, Association for the Study of Peak Oil, December 2000

we are witnessing
a sequential war to control the largest reserves on a planet that
is running out of oil.
-- Michael Ruppert, From
the Wilderness

The revelation of
facts concerning 9/11 is THE most important issue facing America today,
because it could directly expose a conspiracy to dupe Americans into
approving an unjust war for oil.
-- 9/11 Visibility Project (the original "9/11 truth" campaign)

Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are protected by public incredulity.
-- Marshall McLuhan

Global Permaculture Solutions

Perhaps the primary reason for the resource grab marketed as "The War on Terror" and the related "Homeland Security" surveillance system is an elite understanding that Peak Oil and Climate Change will reduce food and water supplies with tremendous consequences for billions of people dependent on industrial agriculture. Humanity is at the precipice of either allowing a global totalitarian approach to manage the crisis, or converting the military industrial complex, transnational corporations, the financial markets, media, etc. toward a planetary scale "global permaculture" response. The scale of the crisis is the largest in the history of civilization, so the response to these interconnected problems also needs to be the largest in the history of our species.

"forget about tearing down the Establishment. It'll
never happen; the Octopus is too powerful. Instead, concentrate on building
an alternative culture and passing it down to anyone who cares. Real
ceremonies create positive energy, but when you focus solely on exposing Nazis, you are living in their twisted world.
....
"you don't need to be an "expert" to penetrate the wilderness
of mirrors. While others concentrated on the somewhat hopeless task
of identifying the shooters [of JFK], I was more
interested in the straw men and rabbit
holes employed by the national media to throw researchers off the track."if you want to be free from the banks, the governments
and giant corporations, you have to learn how
to provide food, water and medical needs. Whoever is doing that is running
the ship. We have to learn to pilot the spaceship Earth in order to
get out from under the banks and corporations."
-- Steven Hager, "The Octopus Conspiracy and other vignettes of
the counterculture," Trine
Day (2005)

"In the long run one can't satisfactorily say no to war, violence, and injustice unless one is simultaneously saying yes to life, love, and laughter."
-- Dave Dellinger